


The Bottom of the Stairs

by dragoninatrenchcoat



Series: Out of the Nick of Time [4]
Category: Forever (TV 2014)
Genre: Father-Son Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-03
Updated: 2020-10-03
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:40:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26783062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragoninatrenchcoat/pseuds/dragoninatrenchcoat
Summary: What if Adam didn't kill Henry?In episode 6, The Frustrating Thing about Psychopaths, Adam provides Henry with an out when he's stuck dying and immobile in the basement of a shop that Jo is exploring. What if Adam was taking the day off of his stalking, and Henry had to figure something out himself?Disclaimer: this is not guaranteed to be a reveal. Like all OotNoT stories, I recommend rewatching the correlating episode just before reading the story, but that’s certainly not required.
Series: Out of the Nick of Time [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1880338
Comments: 6
Kudos: 41





	The Bottom of the Stairs

Few deaths had been as painful as this one. And that was saying a lot.

The knife had made a fire out of Henry’s back, but it was the tumble down the stairs that had broken him: aches and agonies started in his spine and flared out through his limbs, white-hot tendrils of pain searing through bone and flesh. His thoughts jumbled into one another, and off into panic. 

He found himself trying to categorize the pains, to feel which bones were broken, which organs were failing--each of them had a specific sort of accompanying agony, and it said too much about his experiences that he’d begun to be able to tell them apart, like a connoisseur at a buffet table. His back was broken, that was clear. He was paralyzed, completely unable to move, although his spinal cord hadn’t quite severed.

If anyone found him like this, there’d be nothing he could do or say.

The pain, powerful and ongoing, like the whole of him was on fire. No; fire would be a simpler pain than this, an all-over sear that turned mercifully numb. This was ongoing, a pain that came from within as much as without.

Gunshots. He’d heard gunshots. A stray thought, a wish, that one of the shots would ricochet and kill him.

He needed to die. He needed to die quickly, before anyone found him down here. He stared at the corner of the stairwell, at the banister; if he could grab it, if he could shuffle himself into a worse position, maybe a rib would pierce a lung. No, that wouldn’t be fast enough. Maybe he really would sever his spine and the pain would abate. A step in the right direction if nothing else.

But he couldn’t move. He couldn’t move a thing but his eyes, as though the spears that burned through him also anchored him to the ground.

A voice upstairs. Was that Jo’s voice? How? At the very least, he should be coming up on eight minutes, shouldn’t he? At the very least, he should be bleeding out. Please, God, any moment now.

He’d spent many long days and nights wishing he could find out how to die, but Henry had never dreamed so fervently as these endless moments that he could make his own heart stop beating.

#

“Detective Jo Martinez. I need paramedics and units at 108 Reade Street. Suspect is down but I still need to do a sweep. Are you okay?”

The last she said to the woman who’d been tied up to the chair. The Frenchman, if Jo had her guess. The woman wiped tears from her eyes; she looked far from okay, but she sat up from Jo’s embrace and nodded.

Jo nodded back. The front and side rooms of the small shop were clear; all that remained to inspect was the hallway past the killer’s body. She’d be able to do it quickly all while guarding the route back to the victim, in case anyone tried to get by.

With one last confirmation from the Frenchman, she drew her gun and set out.

Into the hallway, step over the body. Check the rooms on either side. Two more doors farther down the hall: a break room, also empty. The last door was labelled as basement access. She pushed it open and scanned down the stairs, already turning away.

Something caught her eye at the bottom of the stairs: a body. A man in a grey suit jacket, not moving.

With a jolt, Jo took the steps as quickly as she dared, paused for the slightest moment to check that the basement was otherwise empty, and knelt beside the body to feel his pulse.

It was Henry. Her heart leapt into her throat.

He was alive, but only his eyes moved, tracking her, a powerful fear buried inside them. She pulled her phone to her ear and said, keeping her voice from shaking. “It’s okay, Henry. It’s okay.” How the hell had this happened to him? Why had he come here? “The paramedics are already on their way. You’ll be fine.”

He didn’t agree with her. She’d never seen terror so stark in his eyes; she didn’t think she’d seen it anywhere before.

He was a medical professional, and he considered himself dead. 

_ “Dispatch,”  _ a voice said into her ear.

“This is Detective Jo Martinez. I have-”

Henry vanished.

Just... vanished.

_ “Detective?” _

She knelt on a perfectly empty rug; far from clean, but no signs of blood. Henry was completely gone. He hadn’t gotten up or strolled away; he was gone.

Where the... what the...

_ “Detective Martinez.” _

“I- never mind. Continue with- never mind.” She hung up.

Had he gotten up and walked away? No, he couldn’t have. Had someone dragged him away? No, nothing like that could have happened; she’d been right here. She’d been staring at him. He hadn’t moved. He’d completely vanished.

But that wasn’t possible.

Despite herself, she stood up and searched the basement, staccato sweeps of her flashlight. What was she looking for? Henry, standing somewhere with his arms crossed? A masked killer with Henry’s blood on his hands? Some pulley system, a set of smoke and mirrors?

There was no way that could have been faked. She’d felt the heat of his body, his quick pulse under her fingertips.

“What the hell,” she said out loud, and heard her voice shake.

She swallowed. Henry was gone. The Frenchman was still upstairs, and she needed Jo’s help, her protection, until they could be certain that Mr. Bentley had been alone.

First, she knelt in that same spot again, fixed the beam of her wavering light on the carpet. She pulled the rug away and felt the floor with her hands. Knocked on it.

Solid. Solid all the way through.

“What the hell,” she said again, and swallowed. Forced herself to stand up.

Get back to the Frenchman, make sure everyone was safe and Mr. Bentley had been stopped.

Then... then figure out what the hell had happened.

#

Henry was lucky tonight; a homeless fellow had offered him a spare overcoat. Henry had tried to turn him down--the coat was much more in need where it was--but the homeless man had refused to be rebuffed. So, with nothing to his name but a well-worn coat that covered him to just above his knees, he set out walking rather than call Abe. Walking barefoot through New York was hardly a safe or fun thing to do, but he needed time to think.

Jo had seen it. 

At least it was just her. No one else had been there; he’d died before she’d finished her call, so the paramedics wouldn’t have had time to meet her. She’d be forced to explain his disappearance, and she wouldn’t be able to.

Would she tell them what she’d seen? He couldn’t imagine the words she would use. No, he could imagine them, but he was hard-pressed to picture them coming from her. Would she come up with some other story, or stand resolutely beside the insane truth? Could it cost her her job--would she let it come to that?

Damn it. He’d really come to enjoy this odd partnership of theirs. It had always been doomed to end someday--every moment had its inevitable conclusion, looming somewhere in his inescapable future--but he’d begun to hope that working with Detective Jo Martinez might spell out his next few years at the very least. Until he needed to start aging, anyway.

But it needed to end now instead. He had to leave again. That was the most frustrating thing of all; he and Abe had promised one another to stay, to weed out the caller’s identity instead of running, and now he was going to have to leave regardless. Give ‘Adam’ what he wanted on a nice platter. Maybe Henry and Abe could disappear from both of them at once.

He wished he didn’t have to. Even more than usual, he wished he didn’t have to. But whenever he considered telling Jo, telling _ anyone _ the truth, the first thing he saw behind his eyelids was Nora’s desperate gaze. The sad and dispassionate way she’d turned her back on the bars of his cell.

No, he had to run. Jo had seen him disappear, so he had to run. He needed to trust that she could figure the rest out on her own.

#

Jo couldn’t sleep that night.

Whenever she closed her eyes, she saw the fear on Henry’s face, the way his eyes had darted around, the thick blood on the dusty carpet. The smell of drying blood reminded her of crime scenes, and crime scenes reminded her of dead bodies; so even while he’d watched her, fearful and staring, he had already smelled dead to her.

Mark Bentley standing in the hall, somewhere he had no business being. The way he’d twisted, reaching for his side--four quick shots in the left of his abdomen, and he’d crumpled to the ground.

Mr. Bentley had bled and cooled on the floor, his gun half-retrieved from where he’d tried to pull it.

Henry had vanished.

Had she imagined it? Nothing of the sort had ever happened to her before, but it was the only option that made any sense. She’d gone to find the Frenchman, and found Mr. Bentley preparing to kill her. Nothing about the scene begged Henry’s presence.

Except that she’d told him to stay put and not go running off to talk to the woman, and when she’d gotten back to the precinct, he’d been gone.

Henry cared too much. It wasn’t a bad thing, except when it nearly got him killed, which seemed to be all too often.

Had it gotten him killed this time?

Had she imagined it?

If she hadn’t, how the _ hell _ could his body have disappeared? Had it been incinerated on the spot? Did it get up and walk off? But she hadn’t so much as glanced away; there hadn’t been any time. He--his body--had just vanished.

Henry was dead.

#

Jo didn't mention what had happened when she went into work the next day. She tried; opened her mouth a few times when Hanson or Reece were nearby. But what could she say?

She'd never hallucinated before, and she seriously doubted that that's what had happened--but all the same, that was the explanation that made the most sense. The Frenchman had seen Henry that night, but had no way of knowing what had happened to him. Maybe he'd left after all. But if that was the case, he'd have shown up by now.

Henry was dead, and Jo had no idea how to explain it.

He didn't show up later in the day, because he was dead, wasn't he? When she asked, Lucas frowned and mentioned how weird it was that Henry hadn't so much as called in. She got up the nerve to call Abe's shop, but no one answered. She felt like she'd stepped into some other world, some dimension where dead bodies disappeared without a single trace.

#

"You're sure this is the right choice?" Abe asked. They stood just outside the airport, surrounded by bustling travelers, a wide avenue of taxis and cars searching for a dropoff point.

They'd packed light, each carrying a suitcase of their most prized possessions--as well as a selection of things that couldn't be left behind for fear of revealing Henry's condition, things like photographs and journals. Henry looked up at the building and couldn't help remembering the first time he'd ever flown in an aircraft, the laughter that had bubbled up out of him as the ground had fallen away. It was rare that he found himself so enamored by human ingenuity that he felt genuinely grateful to be the way he was; if he'd lived an average lifespan, he'd have died long before he would have had the opportunity to fly. He felt a spark of that incredible gratuity each time he flew, but as with all things, the spark had grown slowly dimmer over time.

He turned to cast his gaze on the steadily-growing New York City behind him, the towers that crept up closer to the sky with each new decade. He loved this place, but all things had to end. Except him.

He'd miss Jo. He'd miss his work. He'd even miss Lucas. But it was already an old, worn-in feeling; this time had always been bound to come sooner or later. If it weren't for his bullheaded stupidity, it would've come later. A lesson for next time, perhaps.

"Yes," he finally answered, the word coming out in a heavy sigh. "It's the only choice, really."

Abe nodded and turned toward the airport. Henry stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.

"Thank you," he said, meeting his son's eyes. "I know how difficult it is to leave everything behind. You have a career here. You don't-" the words hurt to say, but he made himself say them. "You don't _ have _ to follow me."

"I know." Abe said it with a casual confidence, as though they were talking about the weather, or their plans for the day. "Come on, we've got a plane to catch."

Henry's hand squeezed on Abe's shoulder. He wished he could embrace him, kiss the top of his head, pick him up and swing him around like when he was little.

When had he gotten so big? Where had all that time gone?

Abe turned and led the way into the airport, and Henry followed.

#

Eventually, missing persons reports were filed for both Abe and Henry, primarily at Jo's insistence. They'd vanished at the same time, abandoning the shop and everything inside.

She'd never told anyone what she'd seen that night. Every time she tried, the words got caught in her throat. They found things missing both from Henry's and Abe's rooms; there was every indication that they were both still alive, just run off without a word, leaving their careers behind. But it must have been Abe alone, right? He must have realized that something had happened to Henry, and left because of it.

Lucas was beside himself, and as the days became weeks, Hanson started treating Jo a little differently. Like he’d given up on finding Henry and was wondering how to break the news to her.

But she’d known all along they wouldn’t find him.

Henry was dead.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey folks!
> 
> I've been going back and forth on how (and whether) to warn you, but the next couple OotNoT stories are pretty dark. I wound up deciding to let you know ahead of time just so I can point out that there are plenty of light/fun stories like Caught on Camera and A Brisk Walk coming up after them; I would normally want to pepper the darker stories in more evenly, but I can't change the upload order of this series, and it just happens that there's a progressively dark trend at the moment.
> 
> On the other hand, if that's your jam, then welcome!
> 
> (I think the tone order of this series has some really interesting things to say about the evolution of Henry and Jo's relationship, but I obviously can't really comment on that until the series is over)


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